AI is now part of how a lot of New Zealand businesses prepare a press release. That is fine, and in one part of the job it is genuinely useful. The part that still has to come from the company, if the company cares about its reputation, is the writing itself.
The useful split is simple. Do plenty of the research with AI. Write most of the release yourself.
Use AI for the research
A press release is only as strong as the facts behind it. Before anyone writes a word of the announcement, someone still has to work out what is actually new, who it is for, what has already been said, and what a journalist would ask next.
That research is where AI earns its place. Use it to gather background, compare how similar announcements have been framed, list the questions a news desk is likely to have, and pull together a briefing the writer can work from. Ask it for the gaps, not just a tidy summary. A good research pass should leave you with names, dates, numbers, and claims you can check, plus a clear note of what you still do not know.
Treat everything it returns as a lead, not as a source. If a figure, a quote, a customer name, or a "first in New Zealand" claim matters to the story, someone at the company needs to confirm it against your own records before it goes anywhere near a release. AI will fill a gap with something that sounds right. A newsroom, a customer, or a competitor will notice when it was not.
A practical research brief
Ask the tool for a background note, a list of claims that need proof, the likely reader, and the questions an editor would ask. Then stop. Do not ask it to write the release you intend to send.
Write most of it yourself
If the company is looking to keep a good reputation in the market, the majority of the release should be written by a person who actually knows the business. That usually means the founder, the person who did the work, or a writer inside the company working from the research notes. Not a finished draft pasted out of a chatbot.
Reputation is what you are protecting. Readers, and especially journalists, can tell when a release was generated. The voice goes flat, the claims get vague, and the announcement starts to sound like every other announcement in the inbox. Once people decide the company does not write its own words, they also start to doubt the facts. That is a hard impression to undo, and it sticks to the brand longer than any single release.
There is a practical line. Using AI to research, to suggest angles, or to point out a muddy sentence is research and editing help. Handing it the job of producing the release, then changing a few words, is not writing it yourself. If most of the sentences are still the model's, most of the release is still the model's, even if a person pressed send.
Write the headline, the opening paragraph, and the quotes in your own words. Those are the parts people remember, and they are the parts that should sound like the company. The quote in particular should come from the person named on it. A made-up quote attributed to a real person is not a shortcut. It is a false statement with their name on it.
What still has to be checked by a person
Even a well researched release needs a human pass before it goes out. Read it out loud. If it does not sound like someone at the company would say it, rewrite it.
- Every number, date, name, and superlative is checked against something the company actually holds.
- Quotes are words the named person is willing to stand behind.
- Nothing in the release promises a result, a ranking, or a legal position the company cannot defend.
- The headline matches the story. A clever line that the body does not support will cost more trust than it earns.
- A second person who was not in the draft has read it and can say, in one sentence, what the news is.
A split that protects the brand
Think of the time in two piles. Put a lot of it into research, and let AI do a lot of that gathering and questioning. Put the larger share of the actual sentences into a person at the company. The release that goes out should read as if the business wrote it, because the business did.
That is the relationship worth having with AI. It can make the preparation faster and more thorough. It should not become the author. Companies that keep that line are the ones that still sound like themselves when the release lands in a journalist's inbox.
If the release is written and you are ready to send it, you can submit your PR to PR.co.nz directly.